On-Site Directory - Delete or Keep?

[Kingof5]

We have 2 ecommerce sites. Both have been hit by Penguin (no warnings in WMT) and we're in the process of cleaning up backlinks.

We have link directories on both sites. They've got links that are relevant to the sites but also links that aren't relevant. And they're big directories - we're talking thousands of links to other sites.

What's the best approach here? Do we leave it alone, delete the whole thing, or manually review and keep highly relevant links but get rid of the rest?

[Matt-Williamson]

Firstly I would ask what the purpose of your link directories were in the first place? How do people submit to your directories and what value do they add to your site apart from possibly having too many links on some of your sites pages? Do you have a lot of spammy sites submitted? I personally would look at cutting this facility as Penguin has hit a lot of link directories and as you say there are a lot of irrelevant sites in your directory! Are your directory pages indexed on a "site:" search in Google?

[BlueprintMarketing]

if you want to pass of google should not care if relevant but.

You say.

"We have link directories on both sites. They've got links that are relevant to the sites but also links that aren't relevant. And they're big directories - we're talking thousands of links to other sites."

Big directories will hurt you unless they help the end user lose them.

I agree that we need to know more about what kind of sites they are to tell you as Moz.com has a directories like recommend seo's, but its relevant to Moz so it will not hurt and helps the end user ask your self if I went here to would this help me?

Hope this helps,

Thomas

[Chris.Menke]

Without knowing more than what you've written, I'd first ask if those directories have any back links going to them and before you'd be able to answer, I say just delete the darn things--they're not helping you. 1. If they've got back links going to them, those back links are likely to be of low quality and by deleting the directories, you negate those links 2. Even if they don't have a pile of low quality back links, it sounds like they're poorly curated, they're not doing anyone any good. 3. You've got a Google penalty on both sites, you've got a directory on both sites, you've got to clean house--just get rid of them.

If the sites in the directory are are industry specific but you can't vouch for most of them and your sites aren't about being a resource for people trying to find those industry-specific sites, just get rid the darn things.

[RobMay]

If you want to go through the 1000's of links you have and identify the ones that are bad, or from bad neighborhoods, make sure to spend the 50$ on a report from Link Detox (http://www.linkdetox.com/). This will help you identify things quickly and allow you to make some quick decisions on link profile management. If it's a big project, take a 1 month subscription to the software, and make sure use it fully to identify the entire problem. Don't forget to use the link disavow tool if needed (if you are looking to keep any valuable links) or try to isolate them to contact later and help fix the issue.

If you plan on getting rid of them all - just dump the entire thing and start from scratch, but it'll be a long road back with best practice work.

Hope it helps! It's worth the $$$ and investment when you run into problems like Penguin or Panda

[Carson-Ward]

Were you requiring reciprocal links for a link in your directory? If so, I'd burn the whole thing to the ground and ask for removal of links where possible. If you really think it helps users, you could add nofollow to the links instead. Without knowing more about the directory, how it was run, and your link profile, it's hard to give solid advice.